A typical engine welder machine includes an internal combustion engine coupled to a generator where the mechanical energy provided by the internal combustion engine is converted to electrical energy by the generator. Traditionally, engine welders provide one or more welding outputs or channels for arc welding along with one or more auxiliary power outputs to support various types of power tools. As a result, one or more users may be able to use the same engine welder at the same time. For some engine welders that provide more than one welding output, users have had to combine the multiple welding outputs in parallel in order to access the full electrical power capacity of the engine welder for a single welding operation. Some engine welders have internal mechanical switches allowing two or more welding channels to be combined in parallel within the engine welder. However, such mechanical switches have to be sized to switch and carry high currents. Switches of this type are costly and prone to failure.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional, traditional, and proposed approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such approaches with embodiments of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.